Michigan Civil Rights Initiative Upheld by Sixth Circuit.
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From the Detroit Free Press, the MCRI, which bans race based affirmative action in College and University admissions, won a reversal of a lower court delay in implementation until the school year beginning in the fall of 2008.
UofM had requested the delay because they say they are well into the admission process for the 2007 school year and immediate implementation would create an undo hardship. Emphasis is mine.
BY NAOMI R. PATTONFREE PRESS STAFF WRITER
A federal appeals court on Friday turned back a decision to let Michigan universities delay implementation of an affirmative action ban on their admissions policies.In its order, a three-member panel of the U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati said it could find no "tenable basis under federal law for suspending the law's enforcement."
On Dec. 19, U.S. District Judge David Lawson,[a Clinton appointee] in Detroit allowed an agreement between the governor, the attorney general and the universities that provided for the schools to continue their current admissions practices until July 1.
The University of Michigan, Michigan State and Wayne State universities argued that the ban's Dec. 22 effective date would hurt applicants for next year's entering classes who applied under a different set of rules.
The district court decision was appealed to the 6th Circuit by Eric Russell, a current applicant to the University of Michigan law school. In granting a stay of the district court decision, the appellate court said any decision on the ban should come through state courts, not the federal bench.
George Washington, an attorney for By Any Means Necessary, or BAMN, a pro-affirmative action group that fought the ban, said the ruling shocked him. He called it an "arrogant opinion" by "right-wing judges trying to shut off public debate."
Washington said he plans to appeal the decision.
A hearty thank you to the Sixth Circuit.
The stark difference between right and left is aptly illustrated in the quote from from Mr. Washington, Esq. A far left organization considers a Circuit Court upholding the letter of the law as passed by voters after a debate that extended since 2003 - the initiative was initially scheduled to be on the ballot in 2004 - to be ...shut[ting] off public debate.
I'm confident that Mr. Washington would applaud the decision that the SCOMA handed down on gay marriage that involved NO debate, NO input from legislators, and NO input from the people of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
Thank you, Mr. Washington, for the object lesson in "what matters". Hopefully, President Bush will keep the lesson in mind with his nominations to the judiciary in the coming two years.
The initiative no elected official wanted to support won and now has been upheld by the Sixth Circuit. You think they would take this as a sign, but I doubt they will.
Yeah, it was disappointing in how pretty much the entire Michigan GOP establishment, plus the entire corporate community, came out against this anti-preferences measure.
Its triumph was the best revenge I guess.
I was very sorry that he did not find more support considering his integrity on issues like these.
"I was led to believe there would be grilled cheese here?" Buster Bluth
Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action v. Granholm, et al. Nos. 06-2640/2642 (pdf file)
SUTTON, Circuit Judge. On November 7, 2006, the people of Michigan approved a statewide ballot initiative—Proposal 2—which amended the Michigan Constitution to prohibit discrimination or preferential treatment based on race or gender in the operation of public employment, public education, or public contracting in the State. Under the Michigan Constitution, the proposal was scheduled to go into effect on December 23, 2006. At stake today is whether the federal courts should permit this state initiative to go into effect or whether we should preliminarily enjoin it in part—in the part, that is, that applies to public universities and to all applicants to those universities. While the Michigan state courts remain free to suspend enforcement of Proposal 2 under state law for all manner of reasons, including those urged upon us here—uncertainty about the meaning of the law, uncertainty about the law’s impact on current admissions policies and uncertainty about changing admissions policies in the middle of the current enrollment season—we are unable to identify any tenable basis under federal law for suspending the law’s enforcement. The First and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution, to be sure, permit States to use racial and gender preferences under narrowly defined circumstances. But they do not mandate them, and accordingly they do not prohibit a State from eliminating them. In the absence of any likelihood of prevailing in invalidating this state initiative on federal grounds, we have no choice but to permit its enforcement in accordance with the state-law framework that gave it birth.
[snip…]
Which leads us to our last point: this is an unusual way to use the federal courts. Ordinarily, one might wonder why a court would hesitate to delay the implementation of a state law for six months when the State’s Governor, the State’s Attorney General and its Universities stand together in urging its suspension. That is particularly so when they offer reasonable administrative grounds for the delay—uncertainty about how the law will be interpreted and uncertainty about applying it during this year’s enrollment cycle. Yet none of those administrative grounds explains why the federal courts should delay the law’s implementation on federal grounds. And none of those administrative grounds explains why a federal court should suspend the law while it declares the Universities’ “rights and responsibilities” under the new state law—given that state courts, not federal courts, have the final say on the meaning of state laws and given that the only vehicle ever presented in this case for such a declaration of rights was the Universities’ cross-claim, which they voluntarily dismissed.
All of this, however, strongly suggests that if an interim injunction should be granted in this case, it is the state courts, not the federal courts, that should grant it. The state courts assuredly have authority to delay the law’s implementation during this enrollment cycle—either because the meaning of the law is unclear or because it will be administratively onerous to apply it immediately. If, as the state parties have maintained throughout this litigation, a stipulated injunction accounts for the concerns of all interested parties and the people of Michigan, one can rest assured that the state courts will see it that way as well. But if the state courts do not see it that way, that proves only that there is another side to the story, one that the federal courts should be prepared to respect.
IV.
For these reasons, the motion for a stay pending appeal of the district court’s preliminary injunction is granted, and the petition for a writ of mandamus is dismissed as moot.
Let's be clear- IANAL, and with that said, it seems to me the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth District did not rule on the merits of the case, but questioned why this matter was before a federal court and not a state court.
Should one wish to call this a victory, it is the opinion by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth District that this matter should be decided by the State, not the federal government.
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"The trouble with our liberal friends is not that they're ignorant; it's just that they know so much that isn't so." - Ronald Reagan
While the court didn't rule on the merits of the suit, since this was a motion to stay implementation pending the suit, the court in your quotation does address the merits of the suit:
...we are unable to identify any tenable basis under federal law for suspending the law’s enforcement. The First and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution, to be sure, permit States to use racial and gender preferences under narrowly defined circumstances. But they do not mandate them, and accordingly they do not prohibit a State from eliminating them. In the absence of any likelihood of prevailing in invalidating this state initiative on federal grounds, we have no choice but to permit its enforcement in accordance with the state-law framework that gave it birth.
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Run like Reagan!
the court addressed the likelihood of success if pursued on the federal level, since the First and Fourteenth permit, but do not mandate, narrowly defined racial and gender preferences.
But almost in the same breath, the court recited a litany of administrative issues and concerns that may warrant a delay in the implementation of the Michigan Initiative if they were addressed on the State level.
That the Sixth District recognized this matter was within the State's purview is of interest to me, and that was my point.
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"The trouble with our liberal friends is not that they're ignorant; it's just that they know so much that isn't so." - Ronald Reagan
. . . to let the universities finish the current year's admissions decisions using the rules under which they started. I support the ban on using racial or sexual categories for either preferences or punishments, but the colleges did begin the admissions decisions under the rules allowed by the two Bollinger cases, and changing the rules in midstream is bound to create a mess.
because they claimed that the 45 days were not long enough to implement. Even though they went to the race-based system on an even shorter time period a few years ago!
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